


MikoTotsu Anthology

by foxinschlox



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Family Angst, Family Fluff, M/M, One Shot Collection, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-07 11:32:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7713376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxinschlox/pseuds/foxinschlox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[ collection of prompt fills / short works from my blog - all Mikoto x Totsuka/ Red Family-centric. * In progress. ]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fluff Tropes: Baby!Anna + Dads

**Author's Note:**

> To everyone who helped make these works possible - with requests & support, or simply reading along- through all of our mikototsu adventures ~>~ thank you for everything~

[a lost 30 Fluff Tropes! prompt fill ](http://foxinschlox.tumblr.com/post/118990507764/30-fluff-tropes)

>   **Tiny infant!Anna + “responsible parents” AU.** Mikoto Suoh Feeds a Baby

**  
**

_゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･ﾟ゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ_  
  
Wide ruby eyes followed Totsuka’s every move as if he’d cast a spell over her. “Ann _aaa-chan!_ ” Nuzzling her forehead finally earned the softest giggle that had ever happened.  
She wasn’t much for playing but brimmed with curiosity, watching and soaking in everything around her. There were so many things to be curious about. The hair that fell over Totsuka’s eyes for instance. She’d grab a little handful of fringe, slowly, and lift it up to find his eyes closed underneath – startled when he’d blink them awake in a flash of starry, honeyed-brown. 

“Again?” And they would play this on repeat. 

Traces of expression were becoming more frequent since she’d come to them swaddled in her aunt’s arms. Passed to Kusanagi’s strong, sure ones. They could do this. They could raise a baby.  
And Totsuka was determined she would never know a dull moment.  
  
The Red King lay at his back on the quilt on the floor.  
 “You’re still at it?” his voice was groggy, deep in the middle of a stretch.  
  
“I’m wearing her out, King. So she’ll sleep. Babies need lots of sleep.”  
  
“Knew that.”  
  
“I bet you didn’t know… she… could… fly!” Totsuka lifted her up with his best take-off sound effect. Tiny feet and arms dangled limp overhead; she seemed to not understand.  
  
“That’s alright,” Totsuka brought her down to earth, down to lay against his chest. “I’ll be her wings for now.”  
  
It was getting late. Even Totsukas can’t go on entertaining forever. Clues that his battery was running low began to drop like heavy eyelids and bouts of tipping forward, sideways, back into King. Until Anna found his eyes still closed the next time she lifted up long fringe.  
  
That wasn’t exactly what caused her to break into whimpers. Triggered by the sound Mikoto pulled himself up halfway, rested a heavy head on his vassal’s shoulder to peer down at her.  
  
“What’s wrong huh?”  
  
Her cries were never the screaming wail of an average human infant. Anna’s were always quiet, plaintive: cries to ache the heart not the nerves. And when she cried this way, barely heard, it disturbed the Red King like nothing else could.  
  
“Here, I’ll feed her,” Totsuka yawned. The little girl tugged helpless at the loosened front of his shirt.  
  
“Sleep, brat.”  
“If you bring the supplies in here I can do the rest…”  
  
“Sleep.” A heavier hand forced Totsuka’s head down.  
Mikoto scooped the baby up without a fuss; on contact she clung to him tight as Totsuka mumbled a few directions. Something about premixed formula. Just warm it up. Sounded easy.  
…  
He rummaged behind all the booze in the fridge, clinking glass bottles aside to find it stocked with enough milk-looking stuff to last the weekend. Izumo was eternally two steps ahead.  
  
So he only had to put one’ve the pre-filled bottles on the electric warmer.  
_Really? A warmer?_  
  
Mikoto took the cold bottle between both hands and warmed the quickest way he knew how – concentrating extra hard not to overdo it. It would bubble up in moments.  
  
With all the care of a mother silverback gorilla he’d prop the little girl over one shoulder by her middle. Naturally expecting her to cling the velcro way she always did. Anna tried her best with tiny hands gripping the back of his shirt.  
  
The Red King scowled down at the drawer full of mysterious baby items – weird shaped bottle brushes and syringes and the like – looking for the part that goes in their mouths for food. He almost forgot to calm down his aural energy before the glass bottle exploded in his palm. Supposed at that point it was warmed enough.  
    
Meanwhile Anna was tipping precariously over the edge of his shoulder. One hand managed to grab her by the leg before she tumbled over. The other pressed the rubber nipple he’d found down over the bottle’s rim. Easy?  
    
He tried a few drops of milk on his wrist, copying how Totsuka had done this last. Why, exactly, he wasn’t sure. But noticed the milk was still incredibly hot. Anna sniffled close to his neck. It was torture to him but she would have to wait a bit.  
    
Mikoto slipped the baby down into the crook of his arm to hold her. Little wisps of white hair were impossibly soft to the touch. Wide ruby eyes stayed wet with tears, locked on only him. Torture like nothing else.  
  
But before too long the kitchen fell serene with only the sound of her suckling. He worried that he’d given in too soon; Anna didn’t seem to mind or draw back at the superheated liquid.  
  
“Everything turned out alright?” Mikoto felt his vassal’s tired voice reach to him from behind.  
  
A grunt that could’ve been yes or no answered. Mikoto didn’t seem hurried to pass her back. In fact, he was transfixed by the way she held his hand that held the bottle.  
  
“ _Mm_ ,” Totsuka stood on his toes to nuzzle close to King, “you’re good at this. She’ll go right to sleep soon, watch.”  
  
“Like you’re s'posed to be.” Mikoto didn’t think his vassal trusted him at all.  
  
“I forgot something.”  
Totsuka completely skipped his king to press a kiss to Anna’s forehead. The baby squirmed, sighed, content.  
  
Mikoto met him eye to eye. The gruff of his tone grew rich..  
“If I gotta’ put you to bed after her I will.”  
  
“Then I’ll save yours.”  
  
  
_゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･ﾟ゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ_


	2. 31 Days of Suffering Challenge: Choking

[31 DAYS OF SUFFERING CHALLENGE](http://foxinschlox.tumblr.com/post/141403824684/31-days-suffering-challenge)

 

> [**Totsuka Tatara x Mikoto Suoh | 27**. Choking](http://foxinschlox.tumblr.com/post/148624448564/are-u-still-taking-prompts-from-that-31-challenge)  
>  Warnings : Explicit, Fireplay / Asphyxiation / Lion-tamer sex gets out of hand

**  
  
·●● **●●●●●●●●●●●●** ●●●●●·  
  
**  
“Does it feel good?”

“Like I’m **d y i n g.** ”

 _… If you could crack that scull of his in one hand_  
Do you think him weak ? Do you think yourself powerful?  
_How do you measure? Have you been measuring, all these years?_

_How do you cope with his body,  
with little more substance than the sheets beneath the heat between the two of you ? …_

“ I’d let you– ” The Red King’s croon is drawn out deep, and wet, and steaming hot : " I’d let you kill me with that pretty mouth _._ “

his grasp knots down into his vassal’s hair  
so Tatara finds himself pinned to the mattress. It’s not enough. He can’t yet say what he wants but it starts with  **restraint**.  
Their pulses still run ragged in their chests.

“Are you going to come for my pretty mouth again?”  
Tatara is precise. Petting sweetly, a young flush coming to his cheeks.  
“You couldn’t even wait to get it inside me.”

His thighs squeeze together. They are dressed with darkened bitewounds and spatters of cum that reach to his soft, panting belly, to his chest, to his face.

“King has been sensitive lately.”

It’s like him - and Tatara knows this - to mark his territory first. When he’s feeling particularly

animal.

“ _Tots'ka,_ **”  
** he snaps.  
But Mikoto stays sprawled over the smaller man. Dripping aural energy with his body’s gloss of sweat. Their evening romp turned so strenuous that the lamp at the bedside lay in pieces on the floor.  
Pointless when the room becomes bathed in pink-crimson light. Under its surreal filter the bedclothes can be found torn in places. Never filthier.

Tatara finds himself in similar condition.  
The bitemarks sting, exposed to air and their mixing, salty fluids.

“You’re **mine**. And I’m not **finished**.”

Tatara gasps at the downward shove to his head – more so at the view this angle gives him. He could spend eternity between those thighs.

“Mm~ obviously not.”

King’s pleasure seeps silvery-white in the glow. Coated, every inch, in dripping aural flame.

His vassal can’t think of anything, anymore, but filling himself with it.  
Choking himself around it.

“It must be bothersome getting so _hot_ again, and after I already _touched you all over_ ,“ Tatara’s cooing against his torso causes a dip in King’s back, a balm-like effect to the skin there, previously agitated with flame. If he doesn’t get more of that on more of him Mikoto’s sure he’ll burn this place to the ground.

” **Hurry up** “  
The Red King raises his voice, teeth bared, and it’s all at once frightening.

Control belongs to the weaker as he feels soft breath grace the crown of course hair above his manhood. He needs to be _touched_ ; _swallowed whole_.

Delicate hands tug him down to straddle his vassal’s face.

Tatara doesn’t hurry.  
As if taking the lighted rim of a cocktail glass to his lips, he savors the intense heat and pressure of Mikoto’s tip before allowing his love to push inside. It’s girth forces his mouth open wider, tongue laving at the taste - the sensation of **flame** licking back and dancing with it.  
    
Otherworldly heat deepens inside him. There is such a powerful release of energy on a shudder through the King’s body, lighting the room like a flare, Tatara is almost alarmed.

If not for the lazy pumps of his hips that come after. Rhythmic like the filthy sounds they make together.

Mikoto’s grunting reminds him of a lion too, taking his fill of his mate. The thought tickles him a moment before burning cock slams the back of his throat. Head swimming in lust, a choked cry barely escapes his mouth. If it weren’t full he’d beg for King to stay so deeply bedded in his throat.

So he tries to convey it pushing and rubbing down on Mikoto’s hips. Moaning for depth.

Patience runs thin tonight.  
King disobeys him, pulling out before shoving back into addictive wet warmth. But his thrusts begin to soften.

In the flood of relief he’s beginning to **feel** his vassal again. The hand in his hair becomes tender rubbing down in reward.

The lappings of Tatara’s tongue in between stimulate twitches along the veiny shaft, and soothe down Mikoto’s aura in the same motion.  
  
The flame suckles off clean everywhere he services and swallows his King; contradicting sensations leave him at the smaller man’s mercy - they make him **weak.**

Until he’s left with the natural tension of arousal : the need to make love to his vassal.

He’s reminded of his own human heart’s gallop, insulated in  _Red_ , and misses holding the man beneath him.

Mikoto drags himself down  
all the way to kiss at Tatara’s slackened mouth. Pulling out causes a crestfallen little whimper - but the sounds Tatara gives with a tongue so hot and dominant forced inside, instead, are breathtaking.  
He loves being held this way the most, so that powerful arms consume him. Hands claw at his King’s back. They claw into red hair.

“I need you,”  
Tatara struggles to cry.

His body rocks against Mikoto’s, taunting his lover’s rigid tension to give way.

 _Be still. It’s dangerous.  
_ The Red King moves to bite his warning into Tatara’s neck, pressuring the lump in the middle with heavy tongue; like preparing to feed on a kill.

“Ah! ”  
the pain is overwhelmingly sweet to the smaller male. Once-wide eyes squeeze tight together. Tatara’s pulse amplifies in his bruised throat. Punctures more telling of an animal attack make tribute to Mikoto’s earlier aggressions there.

“More, King, _kiss me_ ~ **_fuck me more_** ”

Tatara whines and twists for Mikoto’s straining cock to have another turn with his slick, pre-abused entrance.  
  
The body laid beneath him is already so well _used_.

When Tatara stretches out, tempting him, the brushstrokes of his violence are on full display. This isn’t the extent; but if Tatara keeps rubbing the curve of his ass, that tight, pulsing hole against him

he’ll give way.

“Kid, I -”

He grits his teeth against his vassal’s lips. The primal stirring in the Red King’s gut has deadly consequences

… but Tatara d r a w s it out of him. As if plucking and unspooling the most feral cord of his heart; trying, with hands shivering, to tie it nicely around his little finger.

and tame him ‘til he p u r r s … 

“Need you.”  
Mikoto’s voice breaks as it echos.  
  
“ _Fuck, god_ , I need you.”

….  
…  
.

Pounding, pounding,,  
his veins are full to burst.

The Red King splits him open with both hands  
deep between the legs. He buries hips between and watches frail lungs work overtime under the cage of that delicate chest.

Without warning Mikoto spreads an open palm across it. Nipples and the skin around them are close, burning pink and bruised from his teeth.

Mikoto presses down firm. The flesh gives willingly to his fingertips, making lovely indents.

His vassal is forced to ask harder for each breath.

“I love your hands.”  
Tatara holds the other, moving it to cup his cheek and kiss it soft. Lips still creamy wet with traces of his King’s desire. Suckling rough fingertips

_of hands that have killed before._

He encourages King’s grasp  
to find **precisely** what he’s been aching for all this time.

Tatara urges his grip around the delicate circle of his throat.

“Do it here too.”

Mikoto obeys.  
A gasp tries escaping the smaller man, but gets caught under the pressure, tentative at first. Squeezing harder with Tatara’s guidance.

King’s body goes rife with that strange, aroused tension. Silent in contrast to Tatara’s struggled breathing.

His every lower movement works to encourage Mikoto’s manhood lined up with his entrance.  
  
King’s body makes a wealth of slippery, searing hot precum just for him, that eases the rubbing between them. He arches and rolls and teases with his hips. Relentless in flooding King’s senses.

“Fuck me all breathless,” sighs Tatara, irresistibly so,  
“I want to feel you all the way in my throat again~ _… tight … here._ ”

He instructs Mikoto seamlessly; as only the one with power over the Red King can.

Chills shudder through his body under the grip of the hand at his neck  
fanned out, then tightened with a begging gyration of his hips.

“That’s so … **o h** … ”

The choking noise his vassal makes is so eerily pleasant - a high-pitched moan caught and controlled under Mikoto’s grasp

as the head of his cock sinks in where it’s _a l w a y s_ welcomed.

Its impressive length moves to churn Tatara’s insides. A growl rolls from the Red King’s core.

With his mind already gone, he doesn’t waste time transitioning to full force, issuing cry after cry of ecstasy from above in rapid-fire succession.

Oh, they’ve waited long enough.  
  
His vassal’s hips buck down onto the massive, hot intrusion. And each time, a delicate hand helps Mikoto squeeze in rhythm at his neck,

pleading

“ _Tear me apart, yes!… that’s so perfect, k i n g !_

 _Please, please break me~_ ”

Mikoto’s body jolts with fright and triggered energy. It’s wired, after all, to save his vassal whenever he’s in **danger**.

And he’s never heard - or felt from the inside - Tatara beg, body and soul, for such violence before.

Mikoto huffs out steaming breath. The aura within him is well fed on **violence**.

“I love you, I do~”  
Tatara’s pitch changes up-and-down with the rapid pistoning inside him,  
nearing the edge on each cresting moan. Only to have that fullness ripped away from him again and again.

Tatara lets go of King’s hand; Mikoto’s grasp moves on its own with undulating pressure at his throat…

“Good boy, Tots'ka,”  
Spiting anxiety, Mikoto praises him the way he likes. Radiating from the throbs of his cock swollen into his vassal, his body wracks with sizzling pleasure. His right bicep strains above the hand

_that has killed and will kill and feed his **Red** again._

_But not his love. Never the one that tames it down, and holds it back from its only desire_

_to see this world engulfed in flame._

Mikoto seals his eyes shut and wills the aura’s voice away between thrusts.

b u r n.  
_and if it can’t be burnt_  
k i l l.

Mikoto is all at once **afraid**.

But Tatara’s stimulation overrides the warning signals, and the erratic energy surging through their connected bodies, taunting his lover

to take him past a limit he’s never experienced before.

 _\- Stop me -  
_ Mikoto’s cock spasms, asking to fill his love in the midst of his senses breaking down. He bleeds his lip biting for control.

Only a guttural cry for **M O R E** and **M O R E** replies on Tatara’s behalf.

It reverberates through him.  
And through the hand that tightens  
_tightens_  
**_tightens_** down in obedience …

 _In a final, sudden jolt_  
the pair connected go silent. The wake of cries die in the air; and the time when Tatara was calling out for him before long feels ancient.  
Stillness settles. And it’s heavy.

_The moment his sealed eyes open Mikoto feels the blood turn frigid in his veins. As if his world, his powers have been inverted._

_The quiet makes the strained squeak of the bed below him deafening._

_He could feel what he’d done in that split of an instant, plain as the flesh crawling at his neck. Tears begin to sting his eyes._

_The Red King pulls back his hand from his love’s neck._  
  
Finding the print it leaves behind far beyond that of a simple bruise: a laceration. With definite ruptured tendons underneath; with broken trachea and bone.

_A dark little stream has spilled from the corner of Tatara’s mouth. His head falls to the side. He won’t move anymore. He refuses to move when the Red King nudges him **gently** ,_

_the way he ought to always be touched.  
_ **_Be careful with your little savior._ **

_There is nothing left of his small flame.  
_ **_You put it out with your bare hands._ **

_Mikoto gives in to paralysis with bloodshot eyes. Muscles turn to liquid. He folds into himself. To lay against the body lying deathly still beneath._

_Lost to a catatonic daze.  
Until a voice drags him to break the surface of his terror, breathing steady in his ear,_

_“ **Mikoto**. **Mikoto** , are you alright?”_

….  
…  
.

Though soft, seeking hands cup his face, the glaze over King’s eyes still blinds him.

“I’m sorry .. I shouldn’t have made you -”

Mikoto’s back slams the headboard behind when he comes to, trying to wrench himself away from Tatara’s forgiving touch. His chest heaves.

Tatara’s never felt King - through mattress and the charged air between them - gripped with such violent shivers before.

When his body unlocks itself he feels for the near-toppling side table to catch his balance before stumbling out of bed. As if something poisonous had bitten him.

“Here, here,”  
Tatara struggles up from the sheets - still flush and hard from arousal - to wrap his blanket around King’s shoulders and pull him snug against his body for comfort.  
  
“It’s okay. It’s fine. You’re here, I’m here. See now, it’s safe.”

He caresses his love’s face to find him, to steady him again before he hurts himself. Red hair drenched in sweat drips down over his eyes.

Mikoto cannot cope. When he lifts his bowed head he finds his vassal’s worried expression so plainly through the dark.  
  
Tatara isn’t meant to worry - and certainly not over someone so  ** _fucked_** up as him.

“Go back to sleep.”

He pushes past Tatara’s grasp and out of his own room. Leaning, staggering against the dark edges of the hall. He’ll hide in the chamber that held him for days, alone when his aura first arrived and showed its fangs.

No matter how much he wants to return to their bed and sleep this all away together – he can’t.

He wraps up tight, instead, in _his_ blanket,  
with _his_ scent.

Exhaustion cripples the Red King curled up on his throne  
and knocks him out before he can suffer the night without the one he needs to calm him.

….  
…  
.

Breakfast is the last thing he’d anticipate returning him to consciousness. His vision is blurry, but his sense of smell has returned at full capacity.

It’s Tatara’s special: Egg nests on fluffy waffles, drizzled lightly with syrup. Piled atop Mikoto’s favourite : bacons and sausages of different sorts.

“I thought you might need something to get your strength back.”  
the soft voice greets him  
after debating in drawn out silence when or if he should wake his King. The clink of the glass and plates sounds as the tray is set down on the coffee table.

The curled up form inside the blanket stirs.

 _‘You lost so much energy last night. You could hardly stand.’  
_ Tatara keeps the thought to himself.  
_‘I just hope you’ll eat.’_

The smell is too awfully good for most anyone to resist; much less a King in such a weakened state, peeking out groggily to see what his vassal has made for him. A heavy sigh, then…

Mikoto slumps down to sit on the floor before the tray set out for him. Still wearing his exhausted thousand-mile stare.

He could feel Tatara’s own exhaustion from the moment he came to his side. He hadn’t slept at all. But he hides it better.

Tatara waits for the right breadth of quiet between them. Even then they are communicating. More thoroughly than with words, when gazes cross. He rubs at his left arm through his sleeve.

“I’m so sorry King,”  
Tatara’s face heats up.  
  
“I made a mistake, pushing you to go that far,” he feels the need to say it, slow and gentle, with a bow of his head.

“Don’t,”  
Mikoto murmurs cryptically. The tan blanket stays draped over his bare shoulders.

“I can leave, if you still need to be alone.”

The Red King doesn’t answer. He pulls the spoon from the cup of black coffee and tosses it aside.

For once, Tatara takes what he assumes to be a hint. He turns, and lays a hand on the door, feeling as though he hasn’t apologized or helped King recover near enough…

_‘ I didn’t need to be alone  
I needed to keep you safe, the only way I knew how. ‘_

Tatara can feel Mikoto reach out to him through their own wavelength.

_‘ I’m safest with King.  
I can’t let your powers hurt you… that way again. I’ve got to remember, not to be so selfish - to help you protect , that’s my purpose. ‘_

Amber eyes are steady on him when he peers back. Relief washes over the pair in the plainness of the morning. No dazzling charges of aura. No violent displays of passion.  
Just the quiet understanding between two men who know the furthest edges of each other.

There’s no mistaking the beckoning motion Mikoto welcomes him closer with.  
Tatara settles on the floor beside him.

He tries to be careful with his words, but they spill out anyway.

“Oi, so much for trying new things. I’ll admit it gets the better of me sometimes,” Tatara blots away the dampness from his forehead, the last trace of his nightsweats. “I’d really be a mess without you, to keep me steady.”

“You’re still a mess.”

Mikoto hasn’t touched his food yet.  
He buries his face in his love’s hair to take in the waffle-batter smell before pressing lips to his temple. It lasts too long to be a real kiss. As if he’s just hesitant to part from Tatara. A hand slips to rest comfortably against the vassal’s chest and steady heartbeat. It’s pattern **heals** this time.

But he catches a brief glimpse of the marks that remain on exposed skin, above the neckline of Tatara’s loose nightshirt (one of Mikoto’s own).

“Damn.”

“Oh don’t worry,” Tatara laughs unevenly and tries pulling his shirt up to hide his neck, in case it triggers anything unfortunate.  
“They’re no worse than usual. I think we’re both in need of a little recovery time.”

“ ’m sorry too.”

Tatara tugs the blanket more closely around his naked King.  
“Everything is fine. You’ll see.”

He’ll never know how sweet his voice sounds after a nightmare.

….  
…  
.

After breakfast they finish each other. Morning light helps their bodies remain at a steady glowing temperature. Steam from the coffee still wafts through the air.

Hands glide easily up and down the lengths of their bodies  
appreciating the contraction and relaxing of muscles. The Red King surrenders to familiar comfort flooding his senses; he squeezes, milking his vassal’s attentive pink cock all gentle in return.  
  
Suddenly Tatara doesn’t mind being babied. In the light King can see all of his embarrassing expressions too. Arms embrace to keep him snug inside as his vassal moves,  
tranquilized beyond measure.

Tatara sinks deep into his lap one last time. Toes curling. The chirpy moans peeling from his mouth crescendo in King’s ear.

Until the pair stiffen then **m e l t** together naturally.

There’s never been stars like the ones King puts in his eyes.

“Hold me,”  
Tatara’s tired voice isn’t finished urging him in the bliss of post-release. For a vassal sworn to serve he makes enough requests.

But even bonelessly slouched on his throne, Mikoto is pleased to do just that for as long as they both might need.

“Yeah. I’ve got you.”

**·●● **●●●●●●●●●●●●** ●●●●●·  
**

The Red King trusts him unconditionally. (unreasonably.)  
  
The Red King trusts him to the ends of the earth. (and further.)  
  
  
**·●● **●●●●●●●●●●●●** ●●●●●·  
  
**  
_End._


	3. 31 Days: Blindness

[31 DAYS OF SUFFERING CHALLENGE](http://foxinschlox.tumblr.com/post/141403824684/31-days-suffering-challenge)

> **Totsuka Tatara** \+ Red Family   
>  [****15****. **Blindness** | Warnings : Eye trauma](http://foxinschlox.tumblr.com/post/147206880769/totsuka-15)

 

 **·●● **●●●●●● ** **●●●●●●**** ●●● **·  
******  
Two forms on either side, one large, one little, walked him along the path where the ocean begged the land to come out with it.  
  
“You know..”  
  
The world was dark, but luckily he’d saved the look of this place in memory. Sense of hearing heightened, Tatara knew they were coming to a series of rocky tidal pools by the hollowing sound the waves made.  
The girl padded out ahead to meet them.  
  
“I figured out where we were going hours ago”  
Tatara whispered to his King. The pair were barefoot too, pants rolled up to their knees. 

“Think so, huh.”  
  
“Sorry~ but  
you can’t hide _anything_ from me" 

“Yeah? What gave it away?”  
  
Tatara pressed two fingertips to his lips – trying to hold in the secret, leaning into Mikoto,  
“Anna’s strawberry-scented sun lotion. I’m surprised King doesn’t try it on himself sometimes.”  
  
 "Thought I couldn’t hide anything from you.“  
Mikoto’s tease was masked in his usual grave-and-gravely tone. Nothing felt more peculiar than wandering the beach, half-encouraging his vassal to chatter away into the late afternoon.  
_Not like before. When it was quieter between them; organically so.  
_  
Because when he didn’t speak, Tatara seemed not to understand him now.  
    
Anna splashed back to them through the wet sand.  
She took Tatara’s hand and placed a small shell there for him to feel the pearlescent shine of it’s underside.  
  
Shell hunting had always been a favorite of theirs.  
“The colors don’t matter,” she reassured him, hopeful that he would still want to. “It’s the shapes. How they feel.”  
  
“That’s right,” he nodded. Reminded that without her marbles Anna could not see the full spectrum of color herself.  
  
_For a moment Tatara wished he’d never known colors at all. Was it foolish of him to miss them? And the whole wide world they painted?_  
  
“Show me where you found them; there’s bound to be more where that came from,” the vassal offered her his gentlest smile and a hand to be guided. They knelt down beside the pool, knees wet in the surf.  
  
“Here,”  
 Anna lead his flattened palm to the sand cupped beneath the surface. They searched together. _Just like before.  
_ Tatara held out a tiny pistachio-shaped shell for her to examine.  
  
“It’s a cowrie.”  
  
“Ahh, I knew it"  
Tatara teased lightly.  
  
“I found one too,”  
she replied and paired the little shells together in her palm.  
  
… _.“What are you doing?”  
_  
_“Taking a picture. With my heart’s shutter” ….._  
  
Tatara would have liked to take one then. Of their girl and her shells.  
The need to make and hold those snapshots cut into him, into the peace he’d made with his eyes.  
  
“Why don’t we keep a few of these?”  
    
She answered with a nod first, then, remembering, uttered a quiet “yes”.  
She took out the glass jar they brought along from the sling bag at her side.  
  
“Is their new home ready?” Tatara tilted nearer to her.  
  
“Ready.“  
Anna had filled it with sand from the sun-dried beach. He could hear the two shells dropped inside.  
  
_Save the pieces that can be touched, long after the moment is gone.  
_ Tatara knew so well that everything he had known or ever would, could be gone in an instant.  
He was left with less to preserve what was there with him _now_ …. for, perhaps, a time when he would have nothing again.  
  
_‘I’m not worried. Just unprepared now.’  
_ he thought softly to himself. The difference now was that he’d grown to love them.  
He’d grown to love someone.  
  
_Where is King?_  
  
The tide crashed in. He couldn’t feel Mikoto’s presence.  
  
“King?“he searched instinctively back over his shoulder. _He couldn’t find anything._  
  
… when they took Tatara’s sight they took Mikoto’s telling expressions from him; the intensity of golden eyes, the changing, tired creases of his face.  
Much of the way the Red King spoke went unspoken. Especially when it came to his vassal, who could be expected to read his every move so effortlessly …  
  
Mikoto hadn’t heard him. He stood paces away in the damp sand, hands shoved in his pockets, catlike watching the gulls fly overhead.  
  
“King?”  
 Tatara’s call was uncertain, and not so soft this time.  
    
“M’ here.”  
Mikoto answered, ambling over. And made his vassal wonder why he’d placed so much distance between them.  
  
He felt a pang of guilt for forcing King to adapt. They had to learn to communicate all over again.  
  
“Oh. Oh, good,”  
Tatara slipped back into his easy, carefree tone.  
 "I thought you might have tried to go swimming and wandered out to sea.“  
    
“No way in hell.”  
  
The Red King knew to offer out a hand by then, to let Tatara know exactly where he was. One hand, two hands, grasped his open palm, his wrist.  
With the strength of one arm Mikoto pulled him up to stand, unbalanced, though not so severe as when they first retrieved him from the hospital.  
  
The girl watched thoughtfully, and understood the needy way Tatara grasped Mikoto’s forearm and held there.  
  
“They need more dry sand,” Anna murmured down into the glass jar, tugging twice at Tatara’s untucked shirt tail. “I’ll get some.”  
  
“Don’t wander too far,”  
he felt for the rim of her sunhat and propped it up before letting her go.  
  
“ ’ve got an eye on her, brat,” Mikoto huffed.  
Besides that she had more common sense keeping out of trouble than the two of them combined.  
  
“I know. Everything’s fine. I’m just, still getting used to this.”  
  
He let himself relax again, and folded his arms easily so he wasn’t clinging to King anymore.  
 It was disconcerting, not knowing which way to face to find the setting sun; he turned a little to find its warmth against him, but wasn’t sure. There was so much warmth. Perhaps it wasn’t even that late yet, he only guessed.  
  
“What does the sky look like right now?”  
Tatara almost hesitated to ask. It seemed such a bothersome thing to ask King.  
He wasn’t searching for anything poetic—only to know what should be so plain in front of him.  
  
The Red King only fretted a moment over how he might describe it to someone always so full of vivid descriptions.  
  
“Its uh,” Mikoto grunted, “orange.”  
  
“Mm hm”  
  
“And pink. And there’s clouds around the sun.”  
  
“They’ll make a nice bed for him,” Tatara smiled, “after burning all day he needs his rest.”  
  
King noticed the corner of his mouth quivering then tightening, the rare way it did when his vassal was about to cry.  
  
That possibility was gone.  
Two deep scars remained in the sealed flesh where honeyed-brown eyes had been gouged out. He hadn’t done enough crying, he hadn’t allowed himself, when he could.  
  
Before it happened.  
  
**·●● **●●●●●● ** **●●●●●●**** ●●● **·  
******  
The ropes cut into his wrists. He could have tried to burn them away; but what would that get him, aside from another 42 calibre’s cylinder to the temple?  
  
“Twelve of our men are gone”  
the voice coiled around him from behind. It didn’t echo, like every footfall and drip of water in the warehouse; it melted perfect into the deadly atmosphere.  
“As if my sons were taken from me. You must understand that.”  
  
“Completely,” Tatara replied. “It _does_ make the sort of business we do more complicated. But then again… when you understand the risks…”  
  
“Contraband’s one thing to fuck around with. We’ve been hocking arms a _long_ time—but they thought they were up against human beings.”  
  
“Even your average human being is capable of awful violence, don’t you think?”  
Tatara’s bloodied head tilted to follow the man’s path in a crescent of footsteps.  
    
“Could be.”  
  
He sensed infidelity in this man’s personal grief, in the sound of the curving half-grin when he spoke. A leather-gloved hand curled its grip tighter on the chair Tatara was strung back into. The other hand patted the vassal’s shoulder lightly.  
  
“People get hurt, get dead. It’s natural, sure. Only thing that’s not is that **king** of yours. I’ve never seen anything like it.”  
  
“You’re not from around here, are you?”  
the vassal thought they were speaking casually enough to quip. But a casual, strangling jerk on the cords that cross-tied his neck replied.  
  
“Power with no conscience and no restraint. Now there’s a living weapon.”  
  
The release of the ties caused Tatara a violent retch of coughing;  
  
“Wonder what he’d think if we sent you back in pieces.”  
  
“Not much,” Tatara choked out, and cleverly bowed his head,  
“I’m not exactly useful to him.”  
  
“That’s not what I heard” : The voice almost lilted.  
  
“I heard he likes his pretty boys alright,”  
Tatara’s captor gripped his jaw with a rough hand. And the knife tip’s pressure was at his cheekbone. Biting in for a sliver of blood.  
“with pretty brown eyes.”  
  
The way the man spoke was so calming and deep it could have lulled him to sleep, if every nerve in his body hadn’t woken to realize, suddenly, what was going to happen.  
  
“You’re a bargain price for a dozen of _mine_. Your King ought to appreciate that.”  
  
That gloved hand came over his mouth, tight. It’s taste and smell, heavily chemical. Not once had he caught sight of his captor’s face. Only the sight of the blade under sickly yellow light.  
  
The two men guarding the door startled at once. Familiar voices rang out in the corridor.  
  
“ **How**?” the voice rasped behind him.  
  
They hadn’t known how Anna could find them.  
  
Tatara could feel his heart in his throat. The pulse of blood out from severed flesh. The way the blade trembled in uneasy, fearful rage against his face, giving no hint of when it would delve in deeper.  
It was guaranteed. This man would die. But he would leave his regards to the Red King, scrawled across his vassal’s face.  
  
It took a matter of seconds.  
  
The blade found the whites and honey-brown of his eyes, drawn quick across in a deep, slicing motion. All the way across. Gouging in and sharpening his muffled scream, before the warehouse could implode with a field of surging heat and energy.  
A field of red that cause the metal walls, a stained blade, to begin to melt as certainly as it engulfed and turned human flesh and bone into nothing.  
Leaving no trace behind.  
  
Only the echoing, frantic shouts of those bearing the Red King’s mark.  
  
And the king himself?  
 Blind with rage.  
Held back only by a pair of pale and trembling little hands clutching tight to his own.. Anna was charged with holding him, so he couldn’t see, drawing him to his knees so she could wrap arms around his neck and envelop his sight within herself.  
The energy inside him, seeping out threw wild tantrums, roaring for a higher body count.  
She was, in the moment, the only force on earth that could stay him.  
  
His vassal’s sharp and singular wail had ended. Tatara wouldn’t make another sound.  
  
“Hold his head **still.** ”  
  
“I can’t!”  
the boy couldn’t look, blind with tears. He couldn’t cope.  
  
“Close your eyes,”  
Kusanagi growled the order slow, more vicious than anyone in the room had ever witnessed him.  
 "Hold him still and tight – I’ll do the rest.“  
  
The world is dark and staying, stained darker still.  
But even in darkness, it still exists, for a beating heart.  
Totsuka Tatara’s heart would beat on. Quiet. But there.  
  
"There’s enough left to seal.”  
  
Aura cannot hurt those who wield it. But it can mend and heal them when it must.  
  
“S-seal? He won’t see again..”  
  
“He won’t.”  
  
With surgical precision, fingertips warm, slick with his friend’s spilling blood and what remained of the very insides of those once-bright eyes,  
Kusanagi drew his touch across the deep-inflicted gashes, and burned them closed forever.  
  
**·●● **●●●●●● ** **●●●●●●**** ●●● **·******  
  
King’s arm tightened around his waist to make him close.  
  
“It’s going down.” Mikoto breathed to him. “It’s getting dark.”  
    
“Don’t tell me that,” Tatara replied.  
He could _feel_ Mikoto’s gaze stray from where it was supposed to be. And had never felt anything consume him so entirely.  
  
There was an uneasy hesitation in King for a long while then –  he struggled with the intended tone, questioned his timing, it would be _awkward_ coming from _him_  
  
but let the words ruffle the blond strands that fell across Tatara’s ear, the most sensitive curve of his neck :  
“You’re beautiful.”  
  
“ **Please** don’t tell me _that_.”  
Tatara tried to hide his face. But it was caught in a firm, open palm. King never spoke this way. He never needed to. He confessed to his love with his gaze, with his powerful body.  
  
King’s hand holding his face brushed a thumb across the scars, where his eyes had been sealed away.  
  
It disturbed and gave his vassal the strangest pleasure all at once.  
“Not there.”  
Tatara wept, but couldn’t.  
  
“Yeah, there too.”  
and his King would kiss both places one by one. And over again. Until his little flame was soothed. Tatara limpened in his embrace; his breathing almost matched the tides drawing in and out around their ankles.  
      
“That’s all,” the vassal murmured,  
“You don’t have to tell me about the sky anymore. I just wanted to know this once.”  
  
_You don’t get it?  
_ Mikoto had to **say** it. It couldn’t be expected pass between them like energy anymore. No matter how terrible he was with words.  
  
“If I can’t be your eyes- ”  
… _then I’m worthless._  
_A walking murder weapon that belongs in the fucking ground._ _I put you in danger, in unthinkable pain._  
  
_“_ I want t- _”_ Mikoto bit down his selfish anger, voice imperfectly tender and low stumbling over itself.  
_“_ Can I be your eyes? _”_  
  
_“_ My eyes?”  
  
Mikoto loosened Tatara from of his constricting grasp, to find his vassal holding on. Tighter.  
_“My King.”  
_ Tighter still. To feel all that he couldn’t see. The chest that housed the heart, the core, that protected and couldn’t help itself but to pulse, to smolder so brilliantly for him in such a dark world.  
  
“Your _red_ …”  
a little voice interrupted reverently. From where she’d returned to the edge of the tidal pool Anna’s eyes turned wide, taking in the sight  
  
 of the pair’s auras dancing, talking to each other. Sweet nothings, and somethings more, the fainter red entwining with the bolder.  
Totsuka gasped pleasantly; he could _see_ it! **Red!**  
  
Not in the average way of seeing, no. Aura engulfed his remaining senses, so completely, that the flame became as vividly clear as if his eyes beheld it.  
And knew everything King hoped to convey to him at once; more so than any motion of his hand or look in his eyes could tell. And King could understand everything in turn.  
  
_**I’m here. I’m here. We’re one,  
**_ auras whispered together.  
  
“Can we stay a little longer?”  
  
King grunted something vaguely positive in answer, and tussled his vassal’s hair with a clumsy hand. Cast his glance up to the emerging night sky.  
In all the dark beach, in all the dark world, it was bright where they were.  
  
**·●● **●●●●●● ** **●●●●●●**** ●●● **·******


	4. 31 Days: Orphan/War

[31 DAYS OF SUFFERING CHALLENGE](http://foxinschlox.tumblr.com/post/141403824684/31-days-suffering-challenge)

> [**Young Mikoto Suoh + Totsuka Tatara + Special Guest | **18****. Orphan / War](http://foxinschlox.tumblr.com/post/144251302059/ohhh-this-looks-fun-and-evil-tatara-and-mikoto)  
>  ** _AU concepts : Mikoto and Totsuka are both orphaned by the Crater, surviving together scarcely on the edge of its reach **_

**·●● **●●●●●● ** **●●●●●●**** ●●● **·  
  
******  
The red sky had faded. Billowing grey replaced rusty smoke choking the light from above, so it had been dusk at every hour.   
In this place there was no one left beneath it, between the skeletons of buildings. Or it seemed so  
until child’s voice bounded off empty walls of empty complexes.  
  
“Can I come out?”  
Tatara peeked over the end of the tunnel.   
  
“No.”  
The other boy fretted up at him. Heavy wind tussled the red fringe overgrown into his eyes. So they matched in a way; neither had seen a haircut in a while.  
  
Tatara obeyed, ducked back inside the playground castle. This was all a game.

    
Even before the two of the had been separated from their parents, met, and wandered to this vacant place, the older boy hadn’t been much for games   
  
But Tatara found a way to trick him into one. 

When the chain netting leading up to the castle’s tunnel began to rattle on Suoh’s way up, he climbed out one of the portholes on its side and dangled off. The older boy would stalk down the tunnel on hands and knees, hunting for where he’d expected Tatara to escape out the other end.  
  
Their rounds of hide-and-seek were short lived. Either Tatara’s giggling or weak arms would give in. This time he was caught by a handful of blond hair, a handful of shirt collar, and dragged back inside.  
  
“Ow ow!” he yelped, “Too hard, King!”  
  
Suoh was too focused up on the patter of rain on the tube to set him free once safe inside. The bottom fell out of the sky. To cleanse the dust off the wound in the earth nearby.  
  
“Thought so,” the older boy mumbled at the shower’s arrival.  
  
A not-too-distant rumble shook the earth. Part of a building complex the Damocles Down had bitten into had given and crumbled off the crater’s edge – the rain would help wash the concrete and rubble down.   
  
“Do you think there’ll be another red light?”  
  
Suoh didn’t care so he didn’t answer.   
 There could be a hundred more red lights, it didn’t matter. He put his feet up on the wall of the tunnel. Tatara copied.   
  
 The pair huddled close as the water began to come through the portholes. Even the raindrops pelted down a filthy brown-red if you looked near enough.  
  
“I wonder if occhan an’ your mom saw it from where they were.”  
  
“What if they were _in it_ ,” Suoh muttered.   
  
Sometimes - most of the time - Tatara just couldn’t compute the other’s pessimism.   
  
“They’ll come back. Occhan is gone a long time sometimes, but he always comes back.”   
  
“ _T c h.” one corner of Suoh’s lip raised to a half snarl. “_ You wanna’ go _**home**_ _so bad?”_   
  
_The question struck Tatara. He’d never thought of home that way, with the bitterness Suoh had in his voice. And had been perhaps too young, to forgiving, to understand he had every right to carry the same anger around.  
_  
“I… don’t know,” he blinked down at his lap. “I don’t want to leave.”   
  
_Since meeting his new friend, the gears began to turn beneath his cheery surface; the thought of his adoptive father’s empty house would become less inviting than a playground tunnel in the rain - that pushed him close to someone unlike anyone he’d ever met before.  
_ _Someone who_ _ **wanted**_ _him around._   
  
Tatara played with the tiny button on the other boy’s sleeve, thumbing it out of its hole so the cuff came undone. Suoh huffed, but wouldn’t pull away. He seemed to relax.   
  
“When can we get food?”   
  
“When it stops.”   
  
“Okay,”  
Tatara smiled but wondered where or how. Everything was concrete, apart from the waxy shrubs that lined the playground. There were no wild plants to pick off. It would take more than a sunken stomach to bother him - he was used to this. Only, it was getting difficult without a little roughage to nibble the edge off his hunger.   
  
“I can help. I know lots about finding food,”  
Tatara tugged the black-and-red flannel of Suoh’s shirt.  
“I’ll come with you.”   
  
_No._ _Not this time._   
  
Where the older boy planned to search was dangerous.  
Convinced he knew better how to survive than the scrawny brat he rested up against.   
  
  
**·●● **●●●●●● ** **●●●●●●**** ●●● **·  
  
******  
The storm’s departure sent Suoh out for food, or anything like it. Trudging through the soggy playground gravel with hands in his jean pockets. Tatara tagged along, damp-haired and coughing now and then. But Suoh’s arm shot out in front of him once they reached the vacant street.   
  
“The street’s lava,”   
 he warned - if games were what the kid wanted. Suoh stepped down off the curve and scuffed the asphalt with the heel of his sneaker.   
  
“How come you can walk on it?” Tatara whined.   
  
Suoh cocked a glance back over his shoulder, flexing a bit of new confidence.   
 " ‘Cause I’m a _**King, huh.**_ “   
  
“Right! n’ I’ll keep the castle safe!”   
 Brown eyes brightened and stayed faithfully behind.   
They waited for the older boy to slip around the opposite streetcorner. Rather than steal away back to their base, Tatara made an unauthorized dash for the wall of shrubs lining the playground. And knelt to look beneath. There had to be _something_. Maybe even some butterbur or akebi with its yummy leaves and purple blooms if he was lucky.  
This wasn’t exactly the mountains…   
  
Sirens neared from an emergency response vehicle making the rounds. Tatara followed the older boy’s examples from before, ducking out of sight. Pushing deeper into the hedge.   
  
Pressed on into the dark, rubbery leaves and itchy branches so thick in the middle he couldn’t see before or behind. Curious, though, Tatara kept going to see where it ended.  
This was the way into another world.   
  
  
**·●● **●●●●●● ** **●●●●●●**** ●●● **·******   
  
  
Suoh wedged his way between felled concrete and support beams with a grunt. This section of the neighborhood sat on the rim of the crater.   
  
It was bizarre; part of it appeared untouched, while the rest had crumbled over itself. Buildings pushed into each other like dominoes.   
 Hunger drove him to this place on a hunch.   
 But it was right where he thought it’d be: a line of vending machines. Waiting to be cracked open. Because kicking and jarring them side to side hadn’t done anything for him.   
  
In the crevice between two collided buildings he’d spotted a long, loosened water spigot. And planned to rip it out for a weapon.   
  
It wasn’t that far in, though he hadn’t planned for the jagged rebars exposed through the crumbling brick. And those dislodging from overhead. Suoh gritted his teeth.The first grasp and pull at the faucet head wouldn’t give easy; but the second…he was _just_ strong enough.   
  
The remains of the building walls weren’t.   
 Some tumbled down his head, knocking him unsteady so he caught every rusted rebar on his struggle out. Some fell inside the crevice, locking flesh and bone in. For several terrifying moments he was **trapped,** _kicking, clawing_.   
Only lucky enough to rip himself free at justly the right angle; one that happened to nearly fracture his arm.   
  
His choked growl of a cry frightened the grackles off a nearby fence. Suoh hissed at the arm he pulled out from the brick all bloodied, bruised. The shreds of his shirtsleeve dripped too.   
  
The long piece of metal clenched tight in his working hand. Hot pain-fueled rage sloshed around inside him. More than he’d ever felt before, that sent him stumbling,   
  
more than he knew how to contain.  
    
Suddenly the boy’s body was a slave to that rage. Swinging away at the glass faces of the machines. With nothing edible left inside, his beatings went on, grew more savage. He wasted all his strength thrashing out the low windows of the storefront after. To the unforgiving knee of the building next.   
  
The metal in his hand would bend to an angle. He’d bend too, and crumple to the ground, exhausted for the first time down to his marrow. Bits of glass littered in messy red hair.   
  
So **tired**. If he could only return to their castle. To sleep and sleep   
this hunger and pain, this world away.  
  
    
 **·●● **●●●●●● ** **●●●●●●**** ●●● **·  
  
******  
An ashy substance coated the bonnets of the flowers. Hands on scraped knees, Tatara bent down to examine them. In the middle of this garden he’d pushed out of the hedges into.   
  
A windchime sang from the house beyond the rock garden. It was strange.   
His body felt lighter here than when he’d been passing through the hedge. Or was it just his head?   
  
Tatara hopped along the stone path between lanterns. He’d forgot what he came looking for.He began to search around through the pebbles; there were so many of them in so many eye-catching shapes, colors. It was almost dizzying.   
  
  He froze still when sandaled feet came tapping across the wooden deck of the house.   
  
There was another little boy. Who peered over an armful of wrapped bedclothes, through glasses so his eyes couldn’t be easily read at a distance.   
  
  A mother’s voice called from inside: _To take what they returned for, and go._  
  
  The two children regarded each other quietly. The one in the glasses climbed down, neared, and knelt to sift a hand through the pebbles too. They spent a little while this way - placing the prettiest ones in a collective pile - before the elder broke the silence.   
  
“Where do you live?”   
  
“Across the hedge. In the castle.”   
  
“Oh,” the boy in glasses quit pawing through the pebbles, “That is very close to the crater.”   
  
“Uh-huh,” Tatara replied, “I live with King.“   
  
“A king like in the books? Or like on tv?”- by which he meant every news station as of late.   
  
“Umm.. no. Like King.”   
  
“Really.”   
  
“I’m his vassal. He’s not a big King yet, but he keeps me safe.”   
  
“I see.”   
  
A rustling sound at the edge of the garden snatched his attention. He took his fragile new playmate’s hand protectively, and brought him along to take a closer look.   
  
“You!”  
he pointed and shouted at Suoh, who appeared through the shrubs in the evening shadows. Following Tatara’s voice.  
He made his way limping, exhausted across the yard, crooked metal bar in grasp.   
  
The boy in the glasses held Tatara’s hand fast in his own - a sight that drove the anger boiling back up into Suoh’s throat. Close up it burned heavier, as the younger reached out for him. He could feel violet eyes examining where the rubble had battered and bitten him.   
  
“You need a doctor,” the boy in the glasses spoke calmly.   
  
“ **Let**. **Go**.”  
Suoh’s low warning growl was only that of a cub. But there was fire in it.   
He shouldered his way between the youngest and his captor, bullying him back chest to chest.   
  
Reisi would not give ground.  
  
Tatara felt the bloody dampness in Suoh’s torn sleeve the moment he latched onto it. A little gasp crossed his lips. King was hurting; his face was bruised up too.   
  
“If you come with me,” Tatara’s new _acquaintance_ stayed firm,   
 ” _We_ can help you.“   
  
This kid talked like a school counselor. That unspecified “we” and their _**kind**_ intentions had forced Suoh through enough before.   
  
“ _Stay away from him._ ”  
He warned with a final shove, turned his back on the boy in glasses.   
  
“Some King,” Reisi scoffed back at him. “You can’t live on your own.”   
  
The shot went ignored.  
And where the Suoh went, the little one followed…   
 Tatara’s frail voice questioning about his cuts and bruises on their way gave him a numbed feeling from the back of his neck, that soothed down into his bloodstream. An early addiction he couldn’t give up. Not to anyone.   
  
  “ _Please_ …”  
the word broke, lastly, from the one they left behind. The rest fell away.   
  
There was too much at stake. If they went along,   
  
Tatara’s family would find him. Suoh’s mother would find him. They would never meet again, know freedom again.  
The Red Light’s blessing. The Red Light’s curse.  
  
Suoh’s pulse thrummed in his ears. Tatara seemed to weigh nothing, had no trace of muscle left. But clung tight wherever he’d go.   
  
_( Or was it the little King who clung the tightest? )_  
  
The dark leaves swallowed them whole again.   
  
  
**·●● **●●●●●● ** **●●●●●●**** ●●● **·  
******  
  
The boy in the glasses stood alone at the edge of the stone garden. To the wail of sirens nearing.   
He would wonder about them for a long time to come. He wondered if they would survive  
  
?  
  
 **·●● **●●●●●● ** **●●●●●●**** ●●● **·******


	5. 31 Days: Missing Limb

[31 DAYS OF SUFFERING CHALLENGE](http://foxinschlox.tumblr.com/post/141403824684/31-days-suffering-challenge)

> [**Totsuka Tatara (+Red Family) | 5**. Missing Limb](http://foxinschlox.tumblr.com/post/141648135264/totsuka-5)  
>  Warnings: Gore / blood  
>  Word count : 2231

**·●● **●●●●●●●●●●●●** ●●●●●·**

**  
**  
“Critical condition.”  
This is what they call it when the red won’t stop coming.  
When a little white nightgown is soaked all the way through, shed, and wrapped in plastic.  
  
“Fatal” is when a wound can’t be aura-cauterized shut.  
The severed bone and flesh weren’t enough to make the seal. The punctures that tore them apart seemed the work of toothed knives. If she hid her face in his chest she couldn’t see them anymore, but felt the waves of shock through his body as if they never ceased. Those, and the dancing of lustrous flame.  
  
“ _Tatara…_ ”

Her eyes sealed shut for good.  
Sirens then. Different pairs of arms around her lifted and pulled and held her tight, took her away.  
Voices faded in, faded out. When they tried fixing her cuts she would only curl up tighter into herself. Alcohol stings. Something like hours or days passed in waking darkness.  
  
“He’s stable.”  
  
“..an infection we haven’t encountered before.”  
  
“Anna, can you sit up for me? Please?”  
  
“We’ll need the signed consent of a family member.”  
  
The words meant nothing. When she opened her mouth only confessions of guilt escaped. She was lifeless otherwise.  
Exhaustion made the bed where they rested her beside him feel disconnected from the living world.  
  
“ _It isn’t your fault, it isn’t at all, it isn’t at all_ ”  
he answered each time, through the haze of fever,  
and stroked the girl’s back with the only hand left to him.  
She would heave sobs as violently as her body would allow late into the night.  
  
“ _I’ve got you. See, I promised. I’m right here_ ”  
**  
·●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●·**  
  
“Are you there?”  
  
Anna cracked open the door to the hind alley.  
No answer. Only the city’s distant artificial chatter.  
  
Scraping and rattling, yowling cries outside had first drawn her from her room. When they sounded again they came further from the bar than she thought. Chain links pulled to their limit crashed at the muscular force slammed into them over and over.  
  
“ ’s a stray cat,” Mikoto had slurred, mostly asleep. He turned over under the covers.  
  
“It isn’t,” she whispered, still clutching two marbles in her palm. “It’s very big. I looked.”  
  
A feathery yawn came from the other side of the bed. Tatara propped himself halfway up from the sheets, and their combined warmth.  
“Don’t worry, if something dangerous comes too close, King can sense it.”  
 He felt around in the dark to give Anna’s hair a comforting ruffle before collapsing sleepily across Mikoto’s chest.  
“His domain is the safest place. Promise~”  
  
Kind, but useless. As Tataras are prone to be.  
  
Down each step of the stairs she took the groans mounted louder in anguish. Soon Anna could hear words in them plain as human speech:  
  
_“It hurts, It hurts!”_  
in the language of a strain - a sister. She needed help.  
No wonder they couldn’t understand.  
  
With no way to ignore the pleading for relief, Anna slipped out of the bar and into the dark arteries between the buildings. Dampness seeped through the bottom of her house slippers.  
  
“ _Are you there?_ ” She wouldn’t speak out any louder this time, but reached to the one in pain through her powers. “ _Where does it hurt?_ ”  
  
“ _It hurts, Destroy it!_ ”  
the voice hissed. Their throat had begun to gurgle with blood and lathering saliva. She drew closer.  
    
“ _I’m here. I’m going to help you._ ”  
  
Around the foot of the next building Anna caught sight of the black mass writhing in a chain link fence. White tipped its tail. Mikoto Suoh was no animal expert, but he knew a cat when he heard one.  
  
This one was massive. Its back claws bore into the pavement, scraped and slid to try freeing its neck from the barbs of broken links.  
    
“ _Go away!! Human! Filth!_ ”  
  
“ _I’m one of you. You have to trust me._ ”  
  
The strain’s thrashing calmed to deceptive vibrations of her body: purrs of distress. Pupils dilated from slits.  
  
“ _Help me_ ”  
  
The way the opening had been torn in the fence made it impossible for front paws to reach the ground. Claws hooked into more links, and were caught. With too much downward force she would strangle herself to death.  
There wasn’t much time.  
  
Anna could feel into her terror, recalling what it was like to be trapped, and all at once in horrific pain.  
  
“I have to try. Or the Blues will come.”  
A life in a cage waited for her with them.  
  
Anna rested one hand on the strain’s side. The pelt moved under her touch, thickening and thinning over ribs. Anna pressed her other palm into the links on one side of the cat’s neck, where they wanted to bend forward and widen the break.  
If only she could melt the metal softer, or burn it away. Anna tried for a moment and failed to bring Red aura to her palm.  
She would have to put simple pressure on the fence, closer to that gaping mouth full of teeth.  
 In that moment came the first twinge of uncertainty.  
  
“ _Easy, easy_ ”  
Anna copied the way Tatara spoke to their king when he was upset.  
“ _I am only going to free you. I don’t want you to hurt anymore_ ”  
  
Anna pushed to widen the break in the fence. But one of the barbs caught deeper into its skin and it screamed. The shock caused her to press harder. It was able to tear free with a spattering of blood.  
The beast jolted back in a frenzy of thrashing.  
  
Anna felt her knees begin to lock the further she stumbled away from the fence and strain she turned free.  
She cupped a hand over her lips, felt the shallow breath escape,  
“ _Sister. please._ ”  
  
No intelligible response came.  
The slate had evolved this creature into a specialized killing machine - never so apparent as when it curled around, ears flattened, snout wrinkled above a snarl of bladed fangs.  
Its mind was lost to the blinding remains of its pain.  
  
Suddenly there was no time. Nowhere to run.  
Glaring yellow sight locked on the first thing that moved. The pounding of Anna’s pulse _**knew**_ and sounded : _the end, the end._ _no use in moving._ It lunged. And she was paralyzed  
  
Before she could feel teeth in her throat, a slender forearm hooked around in front of it. She was dragged back, another body shielding their fall against pavement. Incredible pressure shoved down against them, claws flailing to slice once, twice into her side-  
    
but the beast’s jowls were already fed.  
Tatara had given it his arm.  
  
The splintering of bone was so crisp in her ear between sounds one would never dream of pouring from the King’s delicate vassal.  
  
Tatara, who hummed her to sleep some nights  
Choking, screaming until his voice was lost to unimaginable agony - screaming even still. All of his might held out his arm, as the rest of his convulsing body tried to lock into a protective, fetal-like hold around her.  
  
How many heartbeats passed before another deadly presence wrenched the cat’s attention away? Its jaws unlocked when the alley was bathed in otherworldly Red, swallowed by a field of heat.  
  
Its pulse _knew_ , same as hers. It would try to run. Its legs would lock.  
And suddenly, all was flame, fueled by voiceless wails.  
The beast had seen death emerge behind them.  
  
A circle of hell on earth had opened up to claim it.  
  
    
**·●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●·**  
  
  
“He took his time. Wanted to make sure it suffered right.”  
  
Kusanagi was the picture of composure until his smoking hand began to tremor again. It had to balance him a moment against one of the emergency room’s awning pillars.  
  
“Kid said he snapped its front legs and burnt a ring around its throat,” he tilted back his head and pictured exactly that. “Throttled with both hands ‘til the life ran out of its eyes.”  
  
“She told you that?”  
  
Kusanagi nodded severely.  
“I’ve seen him in a lot’ve bad ways. Nothing like that before.”  
  
“Is he, y'know..?”  
  
“They’re both alive. Worse for wear but nobody’s hauntin’ a crater in the ground right now.” An ambulance siren threatened to drown him out.  
“Count your wins for the night, like they say. The worst is over.”  
  
He rubbed between his eyes hard. Somewhere between a pounding migraine and a memory he opened them again. There was only a mass of Red where his best friend once stood. It’d trapped him there.  
And it loved every vile second of revenge.  
Burning flesh and fur and pouring blood. Mikoto tore the cat’s throat open in his grasp even after the body quit its death throes.  
  
“Son of a bitch,” the bartender cursed at the feel of spilled intestines roasting underfoot as he crossed to lay hands on the Red King. The remains of one shredded white collared shirt still hung in his grasp.  
  
Kusanagi was just strong enough to grapple with the shoulders of a king lost to terror.  
  
“You hear Mikoto? They’re taking him. Look at me right now.”  
  
One hand held the side of his face with a firm thumb hooked under his jaw. Kusanagi forced up Mikoto’s catatonic stare down at the burnt blood all over his hands. The red domed field around them sizzled with bolts of energy far flung out of control. Their faces were close enough to cancel all but each others’ eyes from the field of vision.  
    
“He needs you to breathe, alright. Make it go away.”  
  
“ **Can’t** ” Mikoto groaned and pushed against him, trying to look past in desperation for where his vassal had gone. “ **Bring ’m here**.”  
    
“He’ll die, Mikoto. It doesn’t matter what you can’t, you’ve _got to_.”  
  
Kusanagi shoved the bloodied fabric into the Red King’s open palm, curled it tight around, and held fast. For as long as it took a heavy head to rest against his shoulder, and to feel the quake in that superheated body winding down.  
    
“He paid upfront for her. Hold up your end of the deal.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Kusanagi held him there. In the end he could never be Totsuka, but there was power in their bond. Enough to shrink the field down to a vapor of aura that, as far as he knew, still imprisoned the king’s body.  
  
It would burn until the two severed parts could be whole again.  
  
    
**·●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●·**  
  
  
“C'mon Anna,”  
Kamamoto’s gruff, brotherly tone was as apologetic as could be. She let him hug around her center from the side of the hospital bed. But when he’d pull her back her entire body would lock up, alarmingly stiff. The world away from Tatara’s side was unimaginable.  
“We gotta’ go downstairs for a bit. Kusanagi-san needs you to come eat..”  
    
“Leave her alone! She doesn’t want to,” Misaki sputtered out, balled up and red-eyed from tears on the couch.  
  
“Grow up Yata,” Dewa glared from the other end, “you’re just upset she wouldn’t go with you either. Don’t make it worse.”  
    
“Haven’t seen you try anything yet so why don’t you fuck off!”  
  
Any sense of normalcy was a comfort. Though she wouldn’t show it, their bickering soothed Anna a bit. Especially when Izumo would come in and fuss at them. They’d learned to quiet down each time he’d come pacing down the hall after a smoke break.  
  
Only this time, the steps weren’t his.  
      
They paused for a while, tentative, in the door. Shifted weight. Afraid to come nearer. Afraid to poison the room.  
  
And such a silence passed over that one could hear, at last, the most fragile voice among them come to life :  
  
“Look King, she’s here.”  
  
Though it couldn’t carry far, it was warm, and even proud. Its existence in this world was nothing short of a miracle.  
  
“A few scrapes here and there but.. I did it.”  
  
The pull to be beside them overcame fear.  
He could have sworn a holy sort of light hung around the bed that cradled Totsuka Tatara. As if it were never meant for the Red King to behold, least of all to wade into…

Mikoto hesitated at the barrier of medical equipment around. With his luck he’d break something. But still-bright eyes, though barely open, lured him nearer, nearer.  
    
Mikoto touched the pillow where his vassal’s arm should have been resting. It wouldn’t be the last time. From then on he’d regard that place with special reverence; along with the entirety of Totsuka’s valorous little frame.  
He deserved to be and would be worshiped, like it or not.  
  
Nor was this the last time Mikoto would get to press lips to the top of soft brown hair, and watch Anna’s little breaths rise and fall beside him- the fondest “well done”.  
His powers receded with a shiver of peace through his body.  
  
“We were wondering if King had gotten lost..”  
  
Damp eyes rose to find him. But Anna quickly bowed her head. Through Mikoto’s touch cupping her cheek, gentle brushes of calloused on smooth skin, they could read each other’s guilt like braille.   
Mikoto and Tatara would never let her bear that weight alone again.  
 At least, until she didn’t need them anymore.  
  
“..he gets so dizzy after bad dreams, it’s hard to tell where he’ll wander off to.”  
    
She reached to hold on to them both.  
  
“Yeah. One’ve those.”  
  
The Red King could never hope to be so strong or so brave as the pair of them.  
It was anyone’s guess if the monster was slain.  
Or if he’d just left it in the threshold of the hospital room door.  
  
  
**·●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●·**


	6. 31 Days: Amnesia

[31 DAYS OF SUFFERING CHALLENGE](http://foxinschlox.tumblr.com/post/141403824684/31-days-suffering-challenge)

>   [ **Totsuka Tatara + Red Family | 17**. Amnesia](http://foxinschlox.tumblr.com/post/141476923689/this-is-evil-i-love-it-totsuka-andor-mikoto)

 

____゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･ﾟ゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ_ _ _ _

 They were strangers around him, all crestfallen looks behind his back and a forced sense of ease in front of it.

“Be careful,” the little girl held his hand and worried up the front steps with him. She couldn’t watch him fall again.

The bell above the door jingled.

“Thank you,” he nodded to her, too formal. And next to the boy who helped him, awkwardly, out of his coat.

Totsuka was missing the parts of himself he’d cherished most. Except they weren’t of himself at all, only stored within - they were of everyone he loved. All that had been captured by his heart’s shutter, erased. Every face, every soul, everywhere he’d known before the bright flash of light on the operating table  
  
was lost.

“Ah! It looks so different from everything else on the block,” he took everything in about this new place.

Totsuka ran a palm over the lit curve of the jukebox’s face. He watched it change color under his touch from bright yellow to red; its electric warmth mimicked that of everyone gathered. _So inviting._

“Really it feels more like a home than a bar.”

‘Not _a_ home. Your home.’  
The bartender filled in the blanks in his head. He’d been the most natural at playing along, certain that the best course of action was to let time and patience heal.

“You’re welcome to stay ’s long as you’d like. We’re running almost 24/7 these days.”  
Under the guise it was clear how badly he wanted his friend back.

Izumo guided Totsuka to the barstool he claimed for himself when they were young. Anything could trigger his memory; so they would try everything.

“Then, since we’re here, could I get a drink?” Totsuka patted with bar with a grin.

“Nice try,” Izumo returned it, comforted to hear something more like his usual self, “Something virgin, ‘til you’re recovered alright.”

The rest of the clan had been warned not to pester him about ‘remember this’, 'remember that’.  
It wasn’t to last in the middle of all the commotion. But Totsuka, being Totsuka, couldn’t help feeling blessed.

“See if you can do those chords you were teaching me last week,” Yata held out the guitar, hopeful, and quickly let down at a lost expression.

“I don’t think I-”

Totsuka’s excuse was lost the instant the bar’s climate shifted, drew and held a collective breath at the grand entrance.

'If this was a gang’, he thought, 'it must be their boss.’

The crowd parted in the center to heavy footsteps, a billow of cigarette smoke. Anna watched Totsuka closely for the spell to break; she knew the spark would come to his eyes. It came every time they found the Red King.

“Mikoto”

…

But it was Izumo’s voice that eased out the name, as if to help him along, to remember the man before him.

Totsuka nodded.  
  
“Good to meet you.”

One could feel the wind knocked out of everyone in the room.

 

____゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･ﾟ゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ_ _ _ _

 

The clan had tried, each in their own way, to draw up what had been lost from Totsuka’s memory. When nothing worked, in defeat they would leave it up to time, and patience.

Until the two who once - and perhaps still, somehow - knew each other completely could be alone together.

Mikoto tugged him hard by the shirt tail, back onto the film room’s couch. The box in the red king’s lap spilled over the edges with photographs.  
But when Mikoto handed him a stack there was little more than foreign appreciation for the faces and scenery in his eyes, reflected on their glossy paper.

“I took these?”

Most were of the Red King himself. Scowling, waking from sleep, a forearm over his eyes, hiding a smirk behind a glass of gin.

“I’m glad I must have known you so well,”  
Totsuka’s voice soothed.

_'He’s very handsome. Even with such a worried face on.’_

The memory had departed, but the instinct was there. Totsuka laid a hand on the blade of his king’s shoulder and felt the bizarre energy within him quit its upset and subside. Mikoto huffed softly at his touch, relaxed.

What sort of place was this? Where the people felt molten hot at their core? Totsuka ignored what must have been bubbling at the center of himself as well.

“To tell you the truth when I woke up I had this paranoid feeling. Like everything around is out to get me,” Totsuka laughed. “It must have been the drugs they put me on. But I haven’t felt that way since you”

Beyond uncertainty, he felt safest beside this man. When it seemed alright Totsuka moved closer to flip through another handful of pictures with him.

“So I thought: you must be someone great, looking out for everyone here. And they must gather around because you make them feel the same way. They’re very lucky.”

He studied the tired creases of Mikoto’s expression. They grew deeper, waiting for Totsuka to tap into their private language, their own wavelength.  
Without it King could only stare, and in such a heavy way it made the back of his vassal’s nape prickle with heat.

_'Tell me. Were you and I?’_

Totsuka could feel the question at the tip of his tongue, and the Red King ached so bad to give him the answer.  
Their wavelength was clouded with static, but it still existed between.

“If I really was a part of you- of all of you then, don’t give up on me, okay?”

The words had a bleak edge considering who spoke them. Totsuka dug fingertips into his knees.

“I want to remember.”

Totsuka returned the searching gaze this man had been probing him with since he came to this place. He wanted to know him as thoroughly as before, and even be allowed to take more pictures of such a striking subject.

“If I stay I’m sure it will all come back to me soon.”

Once lost in honeyed brown eyes, a sudden awareness gripped Mikoto by the throat - it was all at once painfully tight. It shook him to sense and rewound Anna’s words from the night before:  


_“I should have told you.”_

_“Told me what?”_

_“Before. About Tatara. Then it might not have happened.”_

_“Huh?”_

_“It’s dangerous here, for him. I’ve_ _**seen** _ _it.”_

_“He just cracked his head, he’ll live.”_

_“He will die, if he stays. It’s certain.”_  


Mikoto dropped eye contact with his vassal. Pulled from the emotional tie swelling between them.

Stay?  Totsuka shouldn’t stay. You don’t spit in the face of opportunity to protect the one you love.

And for what? To feel in control? To feel okay again?

The Red King stood, disgusted with himself. The box of photographs toppled to the floor and slid off in every direction.

He might have already ruined his chance to give Totsuka a separate, safe life.

“We need to get you home.”

 _King._  
Totsuka mouthed the word before he was able to wrap his voice around the shape.  
“King.”

_From the beginning, King was King._

It forced Mikoto’s attention - the chain going taut. He couldn’t let that sound relieve him. It wasn’t a memory, it was simply the way Totsuka named things.

“Sorry to trouble you like that. I just thought-… guess I’ve had no idea what to think lately. But it’s been a good time. Anyone would want to stick around,”

Totsuka rubbed at the back of his neck and followed, with that particular smile he wore in the trickiest situations. No matter how nice it felt to belong he couldn’t burden them.

“Thanks for having me here.”

“Hey,”  
growled the Red King.  
“Don’t worry yourself about this place.”

He made up his mind quickly, before the sting of loss could set in. Izumo could provide for the brat 'til he got back on his feet. It could be a simple disconnect.

If Totsuka couldn’t remember then he couldn’t hurt. Mikoto would bare it all alone.  
Yes, this would be best he could do for the one clearly not suited to Homra.

“Do you mind if I ask why?”

“It’s dangerous here.”

At his back the Red King clutched a group photo tight. The one with Totsuka at his side.  
It would be all he would have left to keep.

 

  
____゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･ﾟ゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ_ _ _ _


	7. Halloween Cuddlepile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ↳ homra trio + anna minific . ❛ ᴥ❛ .)

゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･ﾟ゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ･*･゜ﾟ

“My prince!”   
Tatara swooned,   
playing up the high-drama of being held captive on the couch by a sleeping beast. It lay across his lap, too heavy.

“Here to slay the dragon at last?”   
He tried to sound demure behind a lace fan, and straightened out the wrinkled organza of his skirt in vain,

“… my legs are kind of falling asleep…”

Of course, Anna - sliding around the bar floor in her tights, princely red doublet and cape - had come to the rescue. She nudged the pointy end of her wooden sword into the dragon’s side.   
Then a bit harder.

“Die.”

Mikoto shook half-awake, and stretched out with a ferocious yawn, revealing claws and the fanged, lizardly-headdress all bedazzled with scales. 

Honestly he would wear whatever if Anna put it on him.  
And would take as many stabs to the ribs as she could dish out.

 

Not to be outdone by Tatara’s dramatism, the dragon writhed, gasped! and lopped over onto his back. Mortally wounded.

To the sound of applause.  
Anna whisked off her feathered hat and bowed to the princess.  
Who leaned to place a gentle kiss to the top of her head.

“So brave~” 

The prince gave a surprised squeak as a pair of clawed arms snatched her up without warning, and flipped her onto the couch with them. Her faint little laugh countered Mikoto’s most serious growling, but grew a only louder as she tried to squirm free. Their play-wrestling wasn’t typical - but it was just the right occasion to pretend being something other than their usual, quiet selves.

“Heh heh heh, foiled again,”  
Tatara crowed, tiara falling down over his eyes in the middle of the fray,  
“Another prince lost to the jaws of my dragon~”

Tatara yelped when Anna threw her arms around his neck, and hugged tight to trap him too. 

The party had long been over. But all the orange stringlights kept the bar in a glow. And the guests who always stayed too long after hours did what they did best : they stayed too long, causing a ruckuss.

Their roughousing halted  
as the barkeep emerged from upstairs, finally able to pour himself a glass of the imported cider he’d been serving all night. 

Tatara perked up from the grip Anna and Mikoto had around him,  
“What happened to actually doing a costume this year?”

“This is my costume,”  
Izumo modeled his grey sweatpants and houseslippers against the bar,  
“I’m being a guy who actually knows how to relax.”

“Can’t even tell it’s you,”  
Mikoto gave a rare chuff of amusement. With Anna perched, victorious, on his chest.

“Wish I could say the same,”  
Izumo served him a wise look. He mixed the cider with a touch of something stronger.  
“Tell me, when is there not a greedy, firebreathing beast hoarding my furniture?”

”Ouch.”

“You have to come rescue us from the dragon,”  
Tatara’s eyes glinted pleadingly at him, patting Mikoto’s greedy, firebreathing belly.

“That’s a bit anticlimactic don’t you think… I mean, me - a commoner.”

Izumo couldn’t resist. He came to ruffle a hand through Anna’s hair. The three of them made, by far, the cutest sight. Cuddled together in costume between all the over-the-top decorations they’d cluttered his bar with.

Cute,  
until Mikoto grabbed him by the waist and toppled him into their pile. His heels were in the air, glasses lost, before he could shout in protest.

“Too slow.”

“Quit that!”

“Oh my, another treat for my pet~”

This was a clearly a setup. Once Izumo found himself caught in the middle of the tangle they ganged up on him: the little girl snuggled up under his arm, Tatara found a place beneath the other - both inescapably attached.

“OOF!” 

Mikoto’s flop across his lap happened to knock the wind out of him.  
The red king yawned. And stretched. And once all settled down again, felt two more gentle pats on his dragon belly.

“For good luck,”  
Izumo conceded to being ensnared in this dungeon of torment a while.   
It wasn’t so bad. At least he still had a few drops of his drink left unspilled in his glass.


End file.
